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WHITHER IOWA? – THE DES MOINES REGISTER DOES A 2016 TAKEOUT: “More than two dozen top Iowa politicians and party insiders interviewed by the Register last week believe Iowa will play host to two full-blown caucus contests in 2016. But that’s not a given,” writes Jennifer Jacobs. “The Republican Party first will undergo intense soul-searching about its future in the wake of Tuesday’s loss. That scrutiny will include questions about whether Iowa’s role in hosting the lead-off caucuses helps the party select its best nominee, top Iowa Republicans acknowledge…‘The real question is: ‘Does a candidate choose to participate here, or bypass us?’’ said Christopher Rants, a Republican operative from Sioux City. ‘Someone who doesn’t want to run that far to the right will have to do the calculus about how to survive without Iowa, or just take their lumps.’”

THE PROBLEM? “Religious conservative activist Bob Vander Plaats thinks the only adapting the GOP needs to do is to pick bold conservatives instead of more moderate candidates like Bob Dole, John McCain and Romney. ‘Where we lost this election is we put up a candidate who had very little difference with the person he was running against,’ said Vander Plaats, a Grimes resident who endorsed [Rick] Santorum for president.”

TWO NUGGETS: Santorum called Steve King’s cell to congratulation him on Tuesday night, and he did an interview with WHO Radio’s Simon Conway on Thursday. Romney Iowa strategist David Kochel had signs in his Des Moines yard for Mitt and a “yes” vote on retaining an Iowa justice who co-authored the ruling that LEGALIZED same-sex marriage. http://goo.gl/iJLfH

REALITY CHECK: Richard Burr?! Kathleen Sebelius?! I spotted Evan Bayh at a Friday night showing of the new James Bond movie…in Cleveland Park!! Jennifer is dutifully reporting what local Hawkeye State activist and strategist types told her, which makes it newsy, but some of these names don’t pass the laugh test.

BESIDES ELIZABETH WARREN AND DAVID PETRAEUS (kidding), WHO DID THE REGISTER MISS? Email suggestions to jhohmann@politico.com, and I’ll include a list of the best tomorrow.

As Jesse Jackson reportedly negotiates a plea deal that could force an Illinois special, all the swing-state newspapers do Sunday stories on what happened last week and Rubio huddles with his strategists, here’s POLITICO’s Morning Score: your daily guide to the permanent campaign.

JMART DIAGNOSES THE GOP WITH PAULINE KAELISM: “Kael was The New Yorker movie critic who famously said in the wake of Richard Nixon’s 49-state landslide in 1972 that she only knew one person who voted for Nixon,” Jonathan Martin writes in the story leading our site. “Now, many young Republicans worry, they are the ones in the hermetically-sealed bubble – except it’s not confined to geography but rather a self-selected media universe in which only their own views are reinforced and an alternate reality is reflected…Citing Kael, one of the most prominent Republicans in the George W. Bush era complained: ‘We have become what the left was in the 70s — insular.’ … Even this last weekend, days after a convincing Obama win, it wasn’t hard to find fringes of the right who are convinced he did so only because of mass voter fraud and mysteriously missing military ballots.” http://goo.gl/VPBcK

NEWT WEIGHS IN—“THIS WAS A PARTY-WIDE DEFEAT AND SHOULD BE THOUGHT OF AS A PROFOUND WAKE-UP CALL”: “This was not just a personal defeat for Governor Mitt Romney and Congressman Paul Ryan,” the former presidential candidate and former Speaker writes in an op-ed for POLITICO. “We lost Senate seats we should have won in North Dakota and Montana. We lost Senate seats we might have won in Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Virginia, New Mexico, and Massachusetts. We had two candidates throw away Senate seats in Indiana and Missouri. In 2010, we had three candidates throw away Senate seats in Colorado, Delaware, and Nevada. Why have the Democrats not suffered similarly from candidate missteps (as in Massachusetts)? We had a chance to pick up four governorships. We won one (North Carolina) and lost three (Montana, New Hampshire and Washington). We lost a handful of congressional seats but did especially badly in the West…Some have suggested the changing demographics mean campaigns no longer matter. Others have suggested we did the best we could. Neither approach is right.” http://goo.gl/qIAW0

OR – as Jay-Z might sing – the Republican Party has 99 PROBLEMS and Mitt ain’t one: http://goo.gl/7XFwa.

MAKING SENSE OF THE GOP’S LATINO PROBLEM –

SCHUMER, GRAHAM RESTARTING IMMIGRATION TALKS: “Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on Meet the Press that he and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) are restarting talks on a comprehensive immigration reform bill that were broken off two years ago. “We had put together a comprehensive, detailed blueprint on immigration reform that had the real potential for bipartisan support, based on theory that most Americans are for legal immigration but very much against illegal immigration,” he said. Their blueprint includes a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants living in the United States. “I think we have a darned good chance using this blueprint to get something done this year,” Schumer said. “The Republican Party has learned that being anti-immigrant doesn't work for them politically. And they know it.”

FACT OF LIFE: Graham faces an almost-certainly-tough PRIMARY challenge in SOUTH CAROLINA, so he’s got to tread more carefully than in past congresses.

ROMNEY’S HISPANIC CHAIRMAN BLAMES PRIMARY PROCESS: "Mitt Romney made some mistakes," former Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said on CNN’s State of the Union. "I think he is an extraordinary man, and I think he made an extraordinary candidate. I think Mitt Romney's comments are a symptom. I think the disease is the fact that the far right of the party controls the primary process." http://goo.gl/J83uD

RUBIO HUDDLES WITH ADVISERS: “Marco Rubio, who has remained out of the public eye since the GOP's shellacking Tuesday, huddled with some of his top advisers Friday to discuss politics and immigration,” Jonathan Martin scoops. “Rubio sat down with Todd Harris, Terry Sullivan and Heath Thompson, three of his political strategists, in Miami as Republicans assess the election and wrestle with how to find a way forward following a defeat caused in part by a weak performance among Hispanics…Some congressional Republicans and other influential party figures off the Hill are nudging him to take a lead on an immigration reform bill - and soon.” http://goo.gl/0QhA0

OBAMA CAMPAIGN NOT SURPRISED BY THEIR WINNING MARGIN: Romney lost the Latino vote last Tuesday by the largest margin of any Republican presidential candidate since Bob Dole, pulling an anemic 27 percent nationwide. In the middle of 2011, Chicago built a Spanish-language media list of more than 700 thought leaders — from the smallest Spanish-language paper in Iowa to talk-radio hosts who lure millions of listeners. At that point, very few Hispanic media leaders were paying any attention to the election — and a few even asked to be taken off the list…A major victory for which Obama’s team now takes credit is increasing the visibility of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who helped draft the unpopular Arizona law … “When he chose Kris Kobach, he wasn’t really that known,” an Obama campaign official said. “Everybody now knows who Kris Kobach is. … We made sure it didn’t go unnoticed.” My story with Emily Schultheis: http://goo.gl/pGh3e.

GOP’S WOMAN PROBLEM SURFACES IN HOUSE LEADERSHIP ELECTIONS: “The GOP’s problems with women — laid bare by last week’s elections — is the main undertone in the battle for head of the Homeland Security Committee between Reps. Mike Rogers of Alabama and Candice Miller of Michigan,” Jake Sherman reports. “That race, combined with the contest for head of the Republican Conference, is becoming a proxy for a larger discussion about a dearth of Republican women in power in the House. To a person, key Republicans privately concede that Rogers has done everything right to become chairman. The same people also say Miller is likely to get the gavel. If so, she would be the only woman to chair a committee.” Other committee chairs are angry that Paul Ryan’s getting a waiver to stay on as Budget chair: http://goo.gl/ZDLZC.

BUT…THEY STRENGTHENED THEIR SOUTHERN HEGEMONY: “In Bibb County, Ala., on Tuesday, a Democrat named Walter Sansing was in a race for county commissioner against a Republican named Charles Beasley, who was on the ballot despite the inconvenience of having died several weeks earlier. Mr. Beasley won,” Campbell Robertson writes on A16 of today’s New York Times. “For the first time since Reconstruction, Republicans took over the Arkansas legislature, and won the state’s last United States House of Representatives seat held by a Democrat. North Carolina elected a Republican governor and took over at least three Congressional seats. The last Democrat in a statewide office in Alabama was defeated. In most Southern states, the margins of victory for Romney were even larger than the lopsided margins for John McCain four years ago.” The story looks at why this could be a longer-term problem: http://goo.gl/maLmQ.

SUNDAY SHOW HIGHLIGHTS—

Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol said the GOP should reconsider allowing the Bush tax cuts for those earning over $1 million to expire: “The leadership of the Republican Party and the leadership of the conservative movement has to pull back, let people float new ideas. Let's have a serious debate," he said on Fox News Sunday. “Don't scream and yell if one person says 'You know what? It won't kill the country if we raise taxes a little bit on millionaires.' It really won't, I don't think…I don't really understand why Republicans don't take Obama's offer to freeze taxes for everyone below $250,000, make it $500,000, make it $1 million. Really? The Republican Party is going to fall on its sword to defend a bunch of millionaires, half of whom voted Democratic and half of whom live in Hollywood?"

Tom Coburn said Republicans have already agreed to raise taxes on wealthier Americans: “I think you heard John Boehner say that already,” the Oklahoma senator said on Meet the Press. “We've had votes in the Senate where we've actually gotten rid of tax credits. I think that's a given. And I think the vast majority of Americans agree with that. The question is how do you do that, and how do you allow taxes to rise at the same time you fix the real problem? And the real problem is uncontrolled entitlement spending a government that has grown massively, not just under this administration, under Republican administrations.”

David Axelrod called Boehner’s comments on accepting new revenue “encouraging”: “I think that the speaker's comments have been encouraging, and obviously there's money to be gained by closing some of these loopholes and applying them to deficit reduction. So I think there are a lot of ways to skin this cat so long as everybody comes with a positive, constructive attitude toward the task," Axe said on CBS' Face the Nation. "It is obvious that we can't resolve the challenge here simply by cutting the budget - we've cut by a trillion-one…The president believes it's more equitable to get that from the wealthiest Americans who have done very well and frankly don't need those tax cuts."

Chuck Schumer hopes Romney speaks up to give Republicans cover: "We need some mainstream Republican voices," the New York senator said on Meet the Press. "We need the business community to speak up on the fiscal cliff, and the need for revenue. You need people like Romney, and Jeb Bush, and others to talk about doing a comprehensive immigration reform, so the Republicans who have the courage to stand up ... don't just hear from the shrill right."

THE VOTER SCREEN WAS BROKEN – WHY GOP POLLS GAVE OVERLY OPTIMISTIC READ OF THE ELECTORATE: A lot of (but not all) Republican pollsters have egg on their face. “Sources familiar with Romney’s polling say that it underestimated the Democrats’ 6-point voter identification edge, nationally, and put far too much stock in what one Republican operative called ‘false signs of Republican enthusiasm,’” Alex Burns reports. “Multiple Republican pollsters also acknowledged that they misjudged how many young people and minorities would show up to vote. ‘We need to rethink what voters we screen out, because clearly, we’re screening people out who are going to vote, and that’s manifestly affecting the numbers we’re looking at,’ said NRSC executive director Rob Jesmer, who said the presidential race effectively swamped the GOP ‘likely voter’ model. ‘It’s more apt in a presidential cycle, but we need to think about it.’ …

“The crux of the party’s challenge in 2012, said Republican pollster David Winston, was figuring out whether the electorate would look more like the 2004 voting population, when Republicans and Democrats turned out in equal numbers, or the 2008 electorate, which was more Democratic than Republican by 7 points…One top GOP pollster expressed dismay at the ultimate composition of the electorate: ‘I had no expectation that Democratic advantage on party ID would be the same as it was in 2008. I thought there would be more Democrats than Republicans, but I didn’t think it would be equal to 2008. There were just too many damn Democrats.’” http://goo.gl/jHV3j

RACES CALLED SINCE FRIDAY’S SCORE—

OBAMA MARGIN GROWS IN FLORIDA: “Obama's lead now stands at 50.01 percent (4,234,522 votes) to Romney's 49.13 (4,160,828 votes),” per the Miami Herald. Some provisional ballots are still being counted: http://goo.gl/K1rKv.

MCKENNA CONCEDES IN WASHINGTIN STATE: “Democrat Jay Inslee sealed his victory in Washington's hard-fought gubernatorial race Friday, as Republican Rob McKenna conceded in an evening phone call,” the Seattle Times reports. “Inslee, 61, the former eight-term congressman from Bainbridge Island, will become the 23rd governor of Washington state — the eighth gubernatorial win in a row for Democrats. McKenna, the two-term attorney general, had trailed since Election Day, but had insisted all week he'd come back and win as late votes were counted. After more batches of ballots were tallied Friday, McKenna acknowledged he could not overcome Inslee's lead, which was fortified by a big margin in the Democratic stronghold of King County.” http://goo.gl/0okpK

FLORIDA—ALLEN WEST NOT CONCEDING: “A partial recount of early ballots from St. Lucie County further narrowed Democrat Patrick Murphy’s thin margin of victory over Republican U.S. Rep. Allen West, prompting the West campaign to call for a recount of all the early-vote ballots,” the Palm Beach Post reports. “Murphy’s total dropped by 667 votes and West lost 132 votes in the recount of 16,275 ballots from the last three days of early voting in St. Lucie County. West’s net gain of 535 votes still leaves him about 0.58 percent behind Murphy in congressional District 18, which also includes Martin County and part of Palm Beach County. A margin of 0.5 percent or closer is needed to trigger a recount under state law.” http://goo.gl/bCclO

BATTLEGROUND BRIEFING—SWING STATE HEADLINES:

USA Today: “Latino donors to Obama gain political clout; Strong Latino support for President Obama could be LEVERAGED to advance legislation, political appointees.” http://goo.gl/l4vRK

Charlotte Observer: “Democrats banished to the bench but warm up for ’14; GOP wins pushed them to back bench, but all not lost, party insists.” http://goo.gl/XGIiS

Raleigh News & Observer (via AP): “NC Democrats coping with all power lost in NC.” http://goo.gl/GrYrR

Richmond Times-Dispatch: “Chesterfield County is not blue yet, but it is not as reliably red as it once was…Romney on Tuesday won central Virginia's most populous locality by 13,000 votes over Obama in the race for the White House, but he didn't accumulate the margins of previous Republican presidential candidates. Though no Democrat has won Chesterfield at the presidential level since President Harry S. Truman in 1948, it is no longer as Republican-leaning as it was in the last decade, when President George W. Bush twice won the county by more than 30,000 votes. Many point to Chesterfield's changing demographics.” http://goo.gl/2S6LW

Roanoke Times: “Where did Democratic support drop the most? IN THE COALFIELDS.” Seven of the eight counties where Democrats saw their largest vote drop-off came in coal country. “One has to wonder how much of this flip is due to the general realignment of white, working-class votes from Democrats to Republicans.” http://goo.gl/DB2jE

2014 – GOP GETS THIRD CHANCE FOR SENATE TAKEOVER: “Twenty Senate Democrats will have to defend their seats that year, while just 13 Republicans will be up for reelection,” Dave Catanese reports. “At least six of the Democrats represent red states — places like Arkansas, Louisiana and South Dakota — and are seen as ripe GOP pickings. Retirements could expand the map for the party. Still, Republicans will need almost everything to break in their favor to pick up the half-dozen seats needed to take back the Senate. It’s certainly possible but a long shot. After all, we’ve seen this script before and know how it ended: with bloody Republican primaries that yielded weak, self-immolating or unelectable nominees.

THE 6 DEMS WHO LOOK MOST VULNERABLE AT THIS POINT: Mark Begich of Alaska, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Tim Johnson of South Dakota and Max Baucus of Montana.

4 POTENTIAL DEM RETIREMENTS: Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, who will turn 90 in 2014; Carl Levin of Michigan; Dick Durbin of Illinois; and Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia. “Of the 13 Republicans up in 2014, the most problematic retirement would be Maine Sen. Susan Collins, whose approval rating was measured to be 65 percent in one poll earlier this month. The moderate Republican hasn’t signaled her plans.”

2 DEMS WHO WILL PROBABLY BE FINE: “Mark Udall of Colorado and Mark Warner of Virginia will also be up for reelection, but Republicans acknowledge their opportunities in this pair of battleground states hinge almost completely on finding impeccable challengers.” http://goo.gl/9EtiH

ILLINOIS HOUSE—JACKSON JR. PLEA DEAL COULD INCLUDE RESIGNATION: “A former U.S. attorney representing embattled Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. is negotiating a plea deal with the federal government,” Chicago’s CBS 2 affiliate reported over the weekend. “The plea deal would end Jackson’s 17-year career as a congressman representing Chicago’s South Side and suburbs. At the center of negotiations is white-collar criminal defense attorney Dan Webb, who served as Chicago’s top federal prosecutor in the 1980s, when several Cook County judges were indicted for public corruption under the ‘Operation Greylord’ investigation…The tentative deal includes: –Jackson resigning for health reasons. –His pleading guilty to charges involving misuse of campaign funds. –The congressman’s repayment of any contributions that were converted to personal use, such as home furnishings, improper travel or gifts. At least some jail time would appear to be inevitable for Jackson.” http://goo.gl/a3QCh

LIGHTER CLICKS –

“MITT ROMNEY” drowned his sorrows with milk in the cold open of Saturday Night Live: http://goo.gl/wspv1.

THE SIMPSONS mocked Karl Rove this weekend. In the opening scene, Bart wrote on the chalkboard “I will not concede the election till Karl Rove gives me permission.” http://goo.gl/qq6YM

SONIA SOTOMAYOR appears on Sesame Street: “Pretending to be a princess is fun, but it is definitely not a career.” http://goo.gl/uCl7r

ED PERLMUTTER, the Colorado Democratic congressman, loves to do cartwheels. The Denver Post has photos: http://goo.gl/Mr01M.

ROMNEY began hemorrhaging Facebook friends and Twitter followers after his loss: http://goo.gl/ECTl2.

CODA – QUOTE OF THE DAY: “[If] another Republican man says anything about rape other than it is a horrific, violent crime, I want to personally cut out his tongue.” – Karen Hughes http://goo.gl/8xwJ4

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